Accelerating 3D Protein Modeling Using Cloud Computing: Using Rosetta as a Service on the IBM SmartCloud

Biology as a scientific domain needs a growing amount of computational power. However, not every researcher has access to high performance computing resources locally. Today, it is easy to buy computing resources on demand from public cloud providers like Amazon and IBM, paying only for the amount of computing that is really being used. However, the difficulty of setting up the simulation and operating the virtual infrastructure is also often a showstopper for scientists to use cloud resources. This gap is filled by innovative software as a service providers like the ETH Spin-off company Cloud Broker GmbH, enabling a more direct access to commercial clouds for researchers in life science. Here we report on a joint project between the ETH Zurich, IBM and Cloud Broker to perform a large-scale 3D protein model simulation using the application Rosetta on the new IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise.